In The City 2008 entertained a thirsty Manchester over the long weekend of 5-7 October. And these people were gasping for music as much as beer, demonstrated by the packed venues every night. Dozens of venues, over a hundred bands; if you missed it, you seriously missed out. For this was the opportunity for next year’s newest talents to be showcased, and the pop and rock moguls were here to gauge their worth.
Pretty much every free venue was pressed into service, and bands were literally running around from one to the other to play their sets. If I hadn’t been asked to work over that weekend, I would certainly have been swanning around the bars and clubs watching the big names. Fortunately, I’d been asked to engineer, and so my evenings were already cut out for me.
The Attic, which lurks in one of the arches next to Oxford Road Station, is a dark, quirky place. It only holds two hundred people at a push, and I don’t recommend you wear white, but for the purposes of In The City, it was ideal.
Stuart Avery was promoting several nights during the festival and, due to demand, could not be at them all. He asked me if I would be willing to engineer and help manage the night and I was more than happy to do so. Having worked for him a few times before, I’ve found him very professional and organised, which always makes life so much easier when you’re doing something as complicated as sound engineering.
In this business, job descriptions are just a starting point. Stu did all the important preliminary, behind-the-scenes work: promoting the nights, booking venues and bands, selling tickets, hiring equipment. But he left it to me to run with the night, along with a lot of help from Neil Wright.
Bands each get a 25min set, giving me 20 minutes to turn around before the next band would play. Seems straightforward? Hah! You try finding bands you don’t recognise in a busy venue (if they’ve turned up on time), fiddling with mics and spaghettified, beer-sticky cables in near darkness, fixing faults and helping out bands. But then keep a smile on your face and your blood-pressure and stress levels manageable. It’s not easy. (Although I find alcohol can help.)
From the raw ingredients, we got a great sound out of all the groups. There were many smiling faces at the end of each evening, and it was a resounding success. Some of the bands we got through our doors that weekend were:
- The Satellite Towns
- The Yellhounds
- Stormy Corner
- Urban Circus
- Elgazelle
- My Captive Audience
- Paleface
- The Manyanas
- The Score
- Huw Wilcox
- George Borowski & The Fabulous Wonderfuls
- Optional Wallace
- six10repeater
- Highroller
- Karma
- Onions
- The Oddness
- Trojan Horse
- The Star Fighter Pilot
- Shmoo
- The Glorious Yang
- Modern Bullies
- No Life
I have some personal favourites from that list: Shmoo, No Life, Onions, George Borowski, Modern Bullies, Yellhounds. But I must confess that I enjoyed them all – even those whose musical styles are not normally my own.
I learnt a lot that weekend, and not all of it had to do with engineering. You might be capable of getting a good sound, but that’s not entirely due to the desk and the mics: a lot of it comes from helping the bands play well, making them feel comfortable and treating them like humans, not instruments; listening to them, not just their guitars.
Thanks to all those who got involved. It doesn’t pay much at this level, I guess, but we reap our rewards in other ways….
